Our Top 10 Gifts For Gardeners

Have a gardener on your gift list? (Or shopping for yourself, perhaps?) Most anyone who loves gardening will appreciate a gift that makes his or her efforts easier and more rewarding. Here’s our list of 10 gift ideas for the plant people in your life.

1. Weather matters to gardeners, and measuring everything from precipitation to temperatures is of great interest to plant people. Wind and Weather offers rain gauges from decorative to digital, plus other weather tracking devices.
2. Gloves for gardening and other outside work are especially important to—and very much appreciated by—women gardeners. Check out the full line of garden and specialty work gloves for women (and men) at Womanswork.
3. Although it is a matter of personal preference, many gardeners consider the Swiss-made Felco 2 Bypass Pruner Classic Model F2 to be the best all-around hand pruner on the market. And for gardeners with smaller hands, Felco offers the Felco 6 Ergonomic Compact Pruner, both available at The Pruner Warehouse and many other outlets.
4. First designed in Japan, Hori Hori knives are versatile weeding, digging, cutting and pruning tools with a regular knife-edge and a serrated edge, as well as a ruler on the blade to measure plant depth. Truly Garden offers a reasonably priced stainless steel version of this increasingly must-have tool for gardeners that comes with a sharpening rod and a leather sheath.
5. While standard, well-made garden hand tools make great gifts, that very special someone on your list might love the hand-forged garden tools of artisan Tuli Fisher, available at Fisher Blacksmithing.
6. Long-lasting, durable plant markers can help gardeners remember what they planted where. They also are handy for anyone who is curious about the identity of the fabulous plants they see growing in another gardener’s plot. Paw Paw Everlast Label Co. sells a style of long-lasting metal plant labels for any situation and even offers an introductory package so you can experiment with different styles.
7. When the hard work of gardening comes to fruition and it’s time to gather the bounty, African hand-woven market and harvest baskets are excellent and durable gathering vessels for everything from flowers to vegetables and fruits. Ali’s Organics and Garden Supply offers an attractive selection of woven baskets in joyful colors and various sizes.
8. Notebooks and journals are great ways for gardeners to keep track of purchases, plant varieties, planting times, fertilizing schedules, plant performance, weather, personal observances and so much more. Café Press offers a nice variety of simple and inexpensive gardening notebooks with serious to funny covers, some of which can be personalized with your favorite gardener’s name.
9. Gardeners often turn to books for basic information, as well as ideas and inspiration. Surf the list at the Savvy Gardening website for a wide selection of books on gardening, complete with reviews and recommendations from the site’s writers and contributors.
10. Don’t forget the gift that’s sure to please: a gift certificate to a local garden center or a mail-order seed company. The Old Farmer’s Almanac lists contact information for a wide variety of seed catalogs, along with comments from gardeners about their favorites.